C4L Aims High with Performance Network

C4L has deployed a new high-speed MPLS/VPLS Ethernet network across its entire UK estate of On-Net data centres.

The new carrier grade network means that C4L will be able to bring together communications, cloud and connectivity to introduce products and services to market much faster and more efficiently than ever before, potentially reducing network and data centre installations from a month to a day.

The IP network was designed for C4L by Alternative Networks (Alternative), using Juniper MX transit routers and Extreme metro-switching hardware for scalability, maximum security and resilience. Alternative is one of the most experienced providers of IP infrastructures and data centre solutions in the UK and a long-standing Juniper Elite Partner and Extreme Platinum Partner.

“There is significant demand for increased bandwidth from our customers, with data consumption and internet usage growing 50% per year,” explains Matt Hawkins, Chairman of C4L. “Our own expanding colocation footprint, new cloud service adoption and complex network designs have helped drive this. We recognised that whilst access circuits of 100Mbps & 1Gbps are common in data centres, 10Gbps are rapidly becoming the norm; growth to 40Gbps and even 100Gbps is already being discussed, so we needed to address this performance demand.”